I'm Not There
by heavenunderhell
Summary: AWOL SERIES: Alice & Mattie centric. Footsteps stirred me from leaden memories, that somehow rejected being pinned down. I looked up to see one of the visitors trail away from the car parked in the middle of the makeshift road. “Alice? Who's that?” AU


A/N: this will be confusing, so very confusing. but well written.

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I'm **Not** T**here**

Graveyards are eternally peaceful…hushed…soothingly depressing. Being here is a tranquil experience, but you lose pieces of yourself each moment you stay and the reason refuses to be found.

I sat down here ages ago, I don't think I'll ever know how long it has been, and I've been thinking. Just thinking. About how when you know that something isn't going to work. When there is no hope for it to last past shattered moments thrown disgracefully into the cold wind, you know from the start, from that very first instant. When you see the gossamer cracks stretching across that fragile, fragile moment.

I wrapped my arms around my shoulders and sighed, expecting to see my breath float into the languid breeze. It didn't. Lately, I've been so cold, and again, the reason refuses to be found. I smile wryly, or maybe, I simply refuse to look.

My gaze shifted from staring at nothing in particular to the car that entered the flat graveyard, tires rolling across the gravel roads, moving slowly, almost reverently. The vehicle came to a sluggish stop and the three passengers inched toward a gravestone. I turned my head, finding the grass below me enthralling. It was a vivid green, contrasting tragically with the upturned dirt or dying grass before other headstones.

I began to swing my feet, I felt childish, but sometimes I need actions such as these. Now I watched my feet, and I began to think of footprints, and footsteps. My feet ceased their lighthearted movements and hung limply against the hard stone. Destined to follow in his footsteps…I didn't know what I was thinking, believing that I could cheat fate. It was vain hope, slick with desperation that slipped from my grip just like his hand, wet from the warm rain from that night. I vaguely felt my numb lips slacken to a lackluster frown. That rain should have been cold, ice cold, unbearably cold. But it had been an astoundingly comfortable temperature, familiar almost, the final enveloping terror that was like coming home.

Footsteps stirred me from leaden memories, that somehow rejected being pinned down. I looked up to see one of the visitors trail away from the car parked in the middle of the makeshift road. It was a little boy, tramping away from his parents and onto what he could only believe to be an adventure. I watched the little boy weave through the gravestones, somehow entranced by the monotonous colors of dying grass and aging memorials.

He would stop every few steps and pick up one of the many discarded fake flowers that littered the ground, and hold them gingerly, their material petals discolored and tattered. Carefully, he would place a flower on any grave that was bare. His childish actions made me smile, made me wonder how a thought process as his could existence in this world. The child's parents were far off, standing above a grave elaborately decorated with bright flowers and wreaths. They didn't seem to mind that their son was currently wandering about the nearly void graveyard.

My smile faded as he ambled closer and closer to where I sat. I hugged my arms tighter around myself, trying to fight off the perpetual chill that seemed to seep into my bones as the little boy came to an abrupt halt before me.

"Do you know who's buried here?" he asked, his wide eyes looking right past my legs and at the inscription.

"Yeah…" I answered after a moment of silence, pulling my legs up and crossing them so the words sliced into the stone where in clear view, "Me."

"Do you?" the little boy looked up to the figure that stood in front of me, silent as death himself.

I laughed, the boy couldn't hear me and the black figure simply stood there in the dormant trance he had been in for the entire time he graced this graveyard. I had dutifully ignored him until the little boy questioned him with the honed skills of prying that only a curious child could possess.

"Alice…" he finally graced the world with his jagged voice, and the vibrant flowers that he held feel from his hands. The unwonted, unbleached flowers painting the ground with their fragile petals.

They were real…

"Alice?" the little boy seemed to experiment with the name, "Who's that?" he asked, his unquenchable curiosity propelling him to push further.

"She's nothing to this world now." his voice was dull, hazy, it exposed a mislaid connection with _something. _I rest my hands on the perfect, smooth marble and sit up from my slouch, I think I know what that misplaced link is.

But he was gone.

Leaving the beautiful flowers to be dusted by cemetery dirt and stepped on by suffering mourners.

Leaving the inquisitive little boy too remain unknowledgeable. Far better for the child to stay that way. I expected the boy to turn and run back to the eternally warm embrace of his mother, and soft smile of his father but he stayed. Staring at the grave I sat on, at the words.

Then he turned and crouched by the abandoned flowers. Gathering them from their fallen mass he spent countless minutes, in which I held my breath, arranging them in the perfect order. Finally he stood up and set them at the foot of the unblemished stone and frowned as he straightened and walk away.

Who can say why a frown chose to mare his young face?

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i bet your confused...all questions could be answered in...a review!

thank you for reading :)


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